IBM isn't mentioning that they're in bed with Red Hat, which makes it rather certain that the Caldera purchase had SOMEthing to do with it. RedHat 7.0 is available as beta to IBM employees already, for those of you in big blue who haven't heard I seem to remember the address being http://w3.linux.ibm.com
JFS is the big thing IBM is handing to RedHat in the hopes that Linux can begin to compete on a closer to enterprise level.
IBM doesn't have much to worry about from linux cutting into their AIX sales, since AIX is primarily run on IBM hardware anyhow...and linux is being marketed towards machines AIX never ran on. The S/390 port had nothing to do with Linux and everything to do with hardware, since mainframe sales have been flagging for a long time and they think this might breathe new life into the line...hell, they might even be right.
Cost - sure, DP motherboards are more expensive, but there are two factors that you are ignoring. First, DP or Quad-Proc motherboards tend to be substantially higher quality, and in many cases have better chipsets and I/O subsystems. Second, It's always cheeper than a second machine.
Not anymore they aren't...Via's Apollo Pro 133A is reatailing for about $150USD, how is that more expensive than your run of the mill uniprocessor mainboard?
Drivers - I don't think I've seen any for WinNT
With NT and now 2k I haven't had a single problem and this is on a home system with your usual "home" hardware, as well as "hardcore gaming" gear.
The relative difficulty of spawning threadpools instead of single threaded apps I cannot attest to...but if you start using things like Photoshop, 3DSMax, Quake3 and other well designed, coded and implemented software that's either of a professional grade for it's application, or written by God's kid brother you tend to notice the benefits of SMP and the lack of serious price barrier these days.
Industrial recorcd labels tend to suck in general, TVT/WAX TRAX! just gets the big attention because they had big names. Ministry, NIN, KMFDM, Sister Machine Gun, Coil, Gravity Kills, etc. SMG has moved on to their own label and Chris Randall (imho misguidedly) supports Napster. Positron Records is his new label, even got a few good bands on it. Ask Acumen Nation sometime about how it feels being on more than one label and getting fucked by both of them as happened when they did Iron Lung Corp as a side project with Clay People.
Currently under developement, techvolunteer.org is stating it's mission is exactly this. Giving the computer community a chance to give to the community at large through volunteer work. Not sure how much sucess they'll have...perhaps people with skills could offer to help develop as a starting point?
No, Rambus is a publicly held company with part ownership by intel.
/* How about profits from licensing Rambus technology */
The same profits AMD is receiving with THEIR license from Rambus. Chipsets define the RAM, not chips. No, Rambus and Intel have no been 100% aboveboard in the way they've approached the market, but Rambus has designed a product with great potential for technical superiority. Anand Tech has two interesting articles discussing the ramifications of RDRAM, DDR SDRAM and SDRAM.
This is a growing hobby of mine as well. I've found that the best way to learn is read...I read both sides of the fence with equal eagerness, because as people have said, most notably Mudge(l0pht), learning to attack is the key to learning to defend. When constructing defences you must think about who and what you're defending against, and get inside their head. I frequent Security Focus, White Hats which is home to arachNID and anything else I can find linked, etc. Tools like Nmap, Nessus, Snort, tripwire, and the assorted "3l337" toolkits are incredibly useful. O'Reilly's Building Internet Firewalls is a good reference for when you get into a production environment, but it's tough to implement with only a few computers.
In regards to the issue of multiple distros, flavors, etc. there's always the safe approach and say that a product has been tested to work on kernel 2.x.x with such and such modules. This would be similar to the approach companies like IBM have taken with products in specifying one particular distro they support, but including fairly complete documentation on what interacts with what so you can move it to a different platform, it worked for me with DB2 for linux to run on FreeBSD. Linux isn't the catchall term in this case, unless they refer to the kernel and basic architecture.
And a third party is really the only way to go, probably with Linus and maybe Alan Cox on the board of directors to ensure that Linux is being viewed correctly, and that people really understand the kernel/module/driver/device structure they've coded. If sales on devices with the logo of the approved de facto standard body rise once it's applied, companies WILL take notice. E-mail campaigns, phone calls, etc. will all serve the community well if we say "We want your product, but we need the assurance that it works. Here's the people to take it to." The community needs to decide who THEY want, before someone gets put in place that we all hate, or at least can't do effective business with.
/* 3.Software has nothing to do with gun control. Just because someone supports free software doesn't make them gun fanatics. Who is so and naive as to imitate everything somebody does just because they happen to agree with you on one particular point? If you think that you cannot agree with somebody on one point without agreeing with everything else they say about every other issue, then you are a pathetic blind sheep who deserve what you get.*/ I hate to say it, but we all know such people DO exist. In discussions about free software, open source software and the like I've had portions of the GNU webpage parroted to me as cut'n'paste sessions. I think perhaps Mr. Meyer may have been close to as extreme in his views as Mr. Stallman is in his, or as Mr. Raymond is in the views up in his pages. While I do not agree with any of the three esteemed gentleman entirely, I will defend to the death their right to make such statements. I perceived the focal point of Mr. Meyers column to be that people need to give every viewpoint they read or encounter a full and honest evaluation. Mr Meyer was, from what I gathered, attempting to filter the viewpoints put forth primarily by Richard Stallman and Eric Raymond through his own experiences with both software and ethics. Just as he urges the world not to accept RSM's viewpoints as the only way to go about software, even free software, I believe it's fair to say not to do the same with Bertrand Meyer's. "If God had a heard he'd be a UNIX programmer" All flames will be read, laughed at and used as toilet paper.
Well, the initial post was a little vague as to what level of computing class this is supposed to be. If it's an intro level class I'd try and do a big section of compare and contrast of the three major OS families out there, Windows MacOS and *nix. Networking, routing, subnetting, these are all well and good but are not the universally needed skills in the world, even the computer world. I would think perhaps an overview of the structure of the internet, it's origins, and then drill down into concepts such as subnetting, heterogenous networking, topics the kids who do go into the computer world will need to know, and topics the other kids won't be wasting their time learning. Being rather close to the education world, a co-habitator of mine is a Jr High Librarian which means she's also in charge of their computers, I know that one of the primary skills lacking in these kids today is basic application skills. These kids do not have the skills or confidence to sit down and write a report, let alone a C program. If however it's going to be a chance for the ubergeeks to further themselves before college then get right into the Unix networking, but do them a favor and try and get it to be an Advanced Placement course so they can at least not have to repeat their curriculum in college.
Less protection is exactly what Jeff Bezos is proposing. His proposal is really quite unique,not only in his industry but in many, in that he is proposing business's be protected by multiple innovations or enhancements, not a single patent. Does anyone remember when a certain major pharmaceutical company saw their stock slide as the patent on Prozac approached it's conclusion? How unfair is it to an industry to allow companies to coast for 20 years at a time? How unfair is that to consumers who *DESERVE* the very best each and every industry has to offer? Things like Open Source software, shorter patents and better informed (ie more demanding) customers are GOOD for business and GREAT for the marketplace. Anything that pushes a company, anything that demands greatness from them, is something i support, not because I love the marketplace, but because I'm greedy. I want a marketplace full of products WORTH the money i spend on them, whether they be software, shampoo or shower heads.
I would agree that the statement put forth by the patent lawyers bar is a bit arrogant, well, more than a bit to be honest. It's not surprising however, the same way a programmer would probably say who is Jeff Bezos to comment on programming style, or a heart surgeon would say who is David Letterman to comment on surgical procedures. I'm not qualified to comment on psychiatric procedures, but as a former psych patient I *AM* qualified to have a slightly informed opinion. Everyone involved in every segment of the patent process should have a fairly equal voice in this matter, and a Patent Office unwilling to listen to what their constituency has to say shouldn't be deciding anything. The lawyers have a valuable contribution to make, if they decide to make it in a constructive way. These ARE "experts" in the field of patent law, and they have seen how the system evolved and what ramifications it had outside the walls of the PO. This is going to be an interesting situation to watch evolve as no matter what the outcome, even a maintainence of the status quo, it's going to have profound implications on how a large number of industries do business in the future.
I've been mulling this over for the last couple weeks, ever since I dug through everything I could find online about the Beowulf linux project. Clustering looks like something that's going to revolutionize computing, but wouldn't it be truly interesting if we could find a way to cluster dissimilar equipment efficiently? An office could take all of their old equipment, 486's Pentium's Pentium II's, and throw them all in one gigantic cluster to harness the power of all the obsolete silicon. If this is an impossible dream someone PLEASE wake me up...
It's interesting that people instantly equate "lobby" with political power. Hasn't the past week or two proved that lobbies can actually be the anti-thesis of political power? How much power do you think the NRA has right this moment after the debacle with Clinton in the media? Who's about to take money from the Chinese and their associated lobbies? "Geeks" aren't a special interest, "we" certainly don't need legal protection any more than Joe Sixpack from the steel mill does. If anything "geeks" have it easier in the work force than any other demographic group. Salaries and benefits for technical jobs are at an all time high, unemployment figures for skilled labor in those positions is remarkably low, so where's the need for protection? Political power can certainly be achieved by grass roots organization, something/. has already achieved in the sense of building a community. I read posts on here regularly, and while I don't agree with them, or even approve of the viewpoints being posted, all the time, I still read them. I would willingly lay down my life to defend anyone's right to say what they wish, and I readily expect every American to be willing to do the same, but I don't ask for anything more than the protection entitled to me as a citizen under the Constitution, and I hardly think my civil liberties are being infringed upon at this moment. As to a different post which suggested revoking the ".com" TLD as a means of making "our" voice heard, if that's what being a geek means, count me out. I'll give all my silicon back and live in a hole in the ground before I'll resort to cyber-terrorism to express my PoV.
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JFS is the big thing IBM is handing to RedHat in the hopes that Linux can begin to compete on a closer to enterprise level.
IBM doesn't have much to worry about from linux cutting into their AIX sales, since AIX is primarily run on IBM hardware anyhow...and linux is being marketed towards machines AIX never ran on. The S/390 port had nothing to do with Linux and everything to do with hardware, since mainframe sales have been flagging for a long time and they think this might breathe new life into the line...hell, they might even be right.
Cost - sure, DP motherboards are more expensive, but there are two factors that you are ignoring. First, DP or Quad-Proc motherboards tend to be substantially higher quality, and in many cases have better chipsets and I/O subsystems. Second, It's always cheeper than a second machine. Not anymore they aren't...Via's Apollo Pro 133A is reatailing for about $150USD, how is that more expensive than your run of the mill uniprocessor mainboard? Drivers - I don't think I've seen any for WinNT With NT and now 2k I haven't had a single problem and this is on a home system with your usual "home" hardware, as well as "hardcore gaming" gear. The relative difficulty of spawning threadpools instead of single threaded apps I cannot attest to...but if you start using things like Photoshop, 3DSMax, Quake3 and other well designed, coded and implemented software that's either of a professional grade for it's application, or written by God's kid brother you tend to notice the benefits of SMP and the lack of serious price barrier these days.
Industrial recorcd labels tend to suck in general, TVT/WAX TRAX! just gets the big attention because they had big names. Ministry, NIN, KMFDM, Sister Machine Gun, Coil, Gravity Kills, etc. SMG has moved on to their own label and Chris Randall (imho misguidedly) supports Napster. Positron Records is his new label, even got a few good bands on it. Ask Acumen Nation sometime about how it feels being on more than one label and getting fucked by both of them as happened when they did Iron Lung Corp as a side project with Clay People.
Currently under developement, techvolunteer.org is stating it's mission is exactly this. Giving the computer community a chance to give to the community at large through volunteer work. Not sure how much sucess they'll have...perhaps people with skills could offer to help develop as a starting point?
No, Rambus is a publicly held company with part ownership by intel.
The same profits AMD is receiving with THEIR license from Rambus. Chipsets define the RAM, not chips. No, Rambus and Intel have no been 100% aboveboard in the way they've approached the market, but Rambus has designed a product with great potential for technical superiority. Anand Tech has two interesting articles discussing the ramifications of RDRAM, DDR SDRAM and SDRAM.
This is a growing hobby of mine as well. I've found that the best way to learn is read...I read both sides of the fence with equal eagerness, because as people have said, most notably Mudge(l0pht), learning to attack is the key to learning to defend. When constructing defences you must think about who and what you're defending against, and get inside their head. I frequent Security Focus, White Hats which is home to arachNID and anything else I can find linked, etc. Tools like Nmap, Nessus, Snort, tripwire, and the assorted "3l337" toolkits are incredibly useful. O'Reilly's Building Internet Firewalls is a good reference for when you get into a production environment, but it's tough to implement with only a few computers.
And a third party is really the only way to go, probably with Linus and maybe Alan Cox on the board of directors to ensure that Linux is being viewed correctly, and that people really understand the kernel/module/driver/device structure they've coded. If sales on devices with the logo of the approved de facto standard body rise once it's applied, companies WILL take notice. E-mail campaigns, phone calls, etc. will all serve the community well if we say "We want your product, but we need the assurance that it works. Here's the people to take it to." The community needs to decide who THEY want, before someone gets put in place that we all hate, or at least can't do effective business with.
/* 3.Software has nothing to do with gun control. Just because someone supports free software doesn't make them gun fanatics. Who is so and naive as to imitate everything somebody does just because they happen to agree with you on one particular point? If you think that you cannot agree with somebody on one point without agreeing with everything else they say about every other issue, then you are a pathetic blind sheep who deserve what you get.*/ I hate to say it, but we all know such people DO exist. In discussions about free software, open source software and the like I've had portions of the GNU webpage parroted to me as cut'n'paste sessions. I think perhaps Mr. Meyer may have been close to as extreme in his views as Mr. Stallman is in his, or as Mr. Raymond is in the views up in his pages. While I do not agree with any of the three esteemed gentleman entirely, I will defend to the death their right to make such statements. I perceived the focal point of Mr. Meyers column to be that people need to give every viewpoint they read or encounter a full and honest evaluation. Mr Meyer was, from what I gathered, attempting to filter the viewpoints put forth primarily by Richard Stallman and Eric Raymond through his own experiences with both software and ethics. Just as he urges the world not to accept RSM's viewpoints as the only way to go about software, even free software, I believe it's fair to say not to do the same with Bertrand Meyer's. "If God had a heard he'd be a UNIX programmer" All flames will be read, laughed at and used as toilet paper.
Well, the initial post was a little vague as to what level of computing class this is supposed to be. If it's an intro level class I'd try and do a big section of compare and contrast of the three major OS families out there, Windows MacOS and *nix. Networking, routing, subnetting, these are all well and good but are not the universally needed skills in the world, even the computer world. I would think perhaps an overview of the structure of the internet, it's origins, and then drill down into concepts such as subnetting, heterogenous networking, topics the kids who do go into the computer world will need to know, and topics the other kids won't be wasting their time learning. Being rather close to the education world, a co-habitator of mine is a Jr High Librarian which means she's also in charge of their computers, I know that one of the primary skills lacking in these kids today is basic application skills. These kids do not have the skills or confidence to sit down and write a report, let alone a C program. If however it's going to be a chance for the ubergeeks to further themselves before college then get right into the Unix networking, but do them a favor and try and get it to be an Advanced Placement course so they can at least not have to repeat their curriculum in college.
Less protection is exactly what Jeff Bezos is proposing. His proposal is really quite unique,not only in his industry but in many, in that he is proposing business's be protected by multiple innovations or enhancements, not a single patent. Does anyone remember when a certain major pharmaceutical company saw their stock slide as the patent on Prozac approached it's conclusion? How unfair is it to an industry to allow companies to coast for 20 years at a time? How unfair is that to consumers who *DESERVE* the very best each and every industry has to offer? Things like Open Source software, shorter patents and better informed (ie more demanding) customers are GOOD for business and GREAT for the marketplace. Anything that pushes a company, anything that demands greatness from them, is something i support, not because I love the marketplace, but because I'm greedy. I want a marketplace full of products WORTH the money i spend on them, whether they be software, shampoo or shower heads.
I would agree that the statement put forth by the patent lawyers bar is a bit arrogant, well, more than a bit to be honest. It's not surprising however, the same way a programmer would probably say who is Jeff Bezos to comment on programming style, or a heart surgeon would say who is David Letterman to comment on surgical procedures. I'm not qualified to comment on psychiatric procedures, but as a former psych patient I *AM* qualified to have a slightly informed opinion. Everyone involved in every segment of the patent process should have a fairly equal voice in this matter, and a Patent Office unwilling to listen to what their constituency has to say shouldn't be deciding anything. The lawyers have a valuable contribution to make, if they decide to make it in a constructive way. These ARE "experts" in the field of patent law, and they have seen how the system evolved and what ramifications it had outside the walls of the PO. This is going to be an interesting situation to watch evolve as no matter what the outcome, even a maintainence of the status quo, it's going to have profound implications on how a large number of industries do business in the future.
I've been mulling this over for the last couple weeks, ever since I dug through everything I could find online about the Beowulf linux project. Clustering looks like something that's going to revolutionize computing, but wouldn't it be truly interesting if we could find a way to cluster dissimilar equipment efficiently? An office could take all of their old equipment, 486's Pentium's Pentium II's, and throw them all in one gigantic cluster to harness the power of all the obsolete silicon. If this is an impossible dream someone PLEASE wake me up...
It's interesting that people instantly equate "lobby" with political power. Hasn't the past week or two proved that lobbies can actually be the anti-thesis of political power? How much power do you think the NRA has right this moment after the debacle with Clinton in the media? Who's about to take money from the Chinese and their associated lobbies? /. has already achieved in the sense of building a community. I read posts on here regularly, and while I don't agree with them, or even approve of the viewpoints being posted, all the time, I still read them. I would willingly lay down my life to defend anyone's right to say what they wish, and I readily expect every American to be willing to do the same, but I don't ask for anything more than the protection entitled to me as a citizen under the Constitution, and I hardly think my civil liberties are being infringed upon at this moment.
"Geeks" aren't a special interest, "we" certainly don't need legal protection any more than Joe Sixpack from the steel mill does. If anything "geeks" have it easier in the work force than any other demographic group. Salaries and benefits for technical jobs are at an all time high, unemployment figures for skilled labor in those positions is remarkably low, so where's the need for protection?
Political power can certainly be achieved by grass roots organization, something
As to a different post which suggested revoking the ".com" TLD as a means of making "our" voice heard, if that's what being a geek means, count me out. I'll give all my silicon back and live in a hole in the ground before I'll resort to cyber-terrorism to express my PoV.
It's supposed to take place on the set of Nosferatu, it's about an actor who believed himself to be a vampire.